I wonder if it might not be possible to distribute server functions across a group of related clients (say a "team", or grouped by location on the game grid). The clients would agree by "majority" vote on an action. Since cheaters are usually a minority, this would filter out a cheating client. Of course, commo overhead becomes a major issue.
Related question to commo overhead... It usually takes much more effort to make/break a connection than to maintain one, correct?
The only real solution I see is centralized control over servers. Not necessarily closed source, but using an untrusted client model with a server in control of someone who has an interest in seeing that the game is played by the rules. This is pretty much the way I'm leaning with an idea that I'm kicking around at the moment... I as a game designer have a vision of how things should run in "my" universe, so I feel that I would need to keep server-side control. Is this unreasonable?
I found it telling that the spammers in question totally disregarded the proceedings... What did they hope to accomplish by not defending themselves? Did they think it'd just blow over or something? I gotta admit, I don't give spammers a lot of credit for intelligence, but come on! Ignoring AOL's attempts to serve documents on them according to the law was a totally stupid move.
If Christian Brothers' actions are indicative of the attitudes of spammers in general, spamming is going to become criminalized real quick. These folks have no respect for the law or even common decency. For crying out loud, they were telling people they could cure Cancer by eating apricot seeds??? That sort of thing should be prosecuted as fraud! Oh well... Hopefully this will serve as precedent, and the spamming "industry" is about to take it in the pocketbook.
Yeah, but then he'd still have to shell out $25,000, right? Thought so... This is sooo much easier. Wonder if he can actually afford a $25,000 AmEx bill, seeing that you have to come up with the cash by the end of the month...
Bad genes are weeded out of the gene pool by natural selection. Darwin anyone? The human race will become a genetic utopia in time. Give us a few million years, and I think we'll all be better off.
Uh, no. We stopped evolving the moment we took control of our environment instead of being subject to it. Natural selection is no longer a force in human evolution. Traits which would get folks killed in a hunter-gatherer environment are no longer a barrier to reaching breeding age.
Arguably, severe allergies would put you in danger from some large predator because you couldn't detect its presence in time (runny nose means you can't smell it, watery eyes mean you can't see it). Thus you wouldn't have survived long enough to pass them on to your son. That's natural selection. But we live in a technological society. How many large predator attacks have there been in New York? And isn't Claritin great for relieving allergy symptoms? We've shaped our environment to our own ends, and thus we no longer evolve.
I'm seeing a lot of concern over "stagnation of the species" in this discussion. Fact is, it's already happening! It's been happening ever since the first human decided to feed his badly maimed friend instead of leaving him to die because he couldn't contribute to the survival of the group. Genetic engineering is just another example of a technology that separates us further from the effects of natural selection.
I'd be interested to see if some of the nastier genetically-based diseases we deal with on a regular basis today were present in the past. For instance, I'm willing to bet that allergies were never as widespread as they are today. If everyone can survive to breeding age, any random mutations, even potentially life-threatening ones, can enter the gene pool and propagate unchecked.
But anyway... I got off on a rant there. We're better off now than we were in the hunter-gatherer period of our past. However, natural selection has never been a factor in human change. If our environment somehow kicks our asses, then evolution will occur. Until then, we're just the same as those Cro-Magnons way back when. The only difference is the amount of artificial change that we are capable of causing.
Philadelphia brand cream cheese is made in sweatshop factories with indentured Quakers as workers. You object to this.
But you love American style individually-wrapped cheese slices, and you can't live without having a bottle of Cheez Whiz within three feet of you. How are you going to force Kraft to change its behavior when you're unwilling to forgo every product they produce?
It was a little of both. The narrator would set the scene (almost word for word from the book) with the characters interacting between the narration. In other words, the narrator became the third-person(omnicient) "character" from the book, which allowed the listeners to visualize the action more clearly. The only lack of faithfulness on the part of the NPR series was the things that got left out.
Anyone know where I can purchase a copy of this? NPR did some really spectacular stuff as far as "audio adventures" back in the '70s and '80s. The Fourth Tower of Inverness and the other Jack Flanders adventures from ZBS spring immediately to mind... It's a shame they don't seem to do that anymore (at least not in my area).
The poor character development makes sense if you think about the properties of the society at that period of time. Individuals have become depersonalized. Consumerism is going at full tilt. Machines are taking up more and more of an individual's time (remember the incident between the Abbot and the autoscribe?). Considering this was written in the 50s, it's an amazingly accurate prediction of today's society.
A Canticle For Liebowitz has been an influence on me for a long time. My first exposure to it (back when I was five or six?) was the Public Radio series, which was thoroughly spooky. My dad admitted later that he erased the fifteenth episode because it scared the ever-living crap out of him (being a 50's veteran of "duck and cover" and an EMT...). I've now read the book seven or eight times, and each time I get something new out of it.
Before you all get the wrong idea about the Christian aspects, the book does not get preachy as you might expect from the review. Instead, it portrays the conflict between reason and religion from a third-party perspective, showing equally the beneficial and harmful aspects of each. It forces you to look at both sides of the issue - not from the perspective of which is wrong and which is right - and shows how very similar the two points of view can be.
Above all, it's a study of human nature. I can't elaborate much more than that without spoiling it, but it highlights our inability as a race to learn from past mistakes. And scattered through the deep philosophical implications are some of the most humorous situations I've encountered since Douglas Adams (I'm not saying it's a laugh riot; the humor is well balanced to provide just the right amount of comic relief.) All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this book if you haven't already read it. And if you have, read it again! (Especially if it's been a while...)
I've come to the conclusion that a technology has become passé when they start making it with transparent plastic... First it was casette tapes, then floppies, now Macs!:)
This wasn't meant to be an anti-Apple flame. It just seems funny to me that more and more things are being made in transparent plastic varieties. Phones, pagers, you name it... And other than the initial niftiness of getting to see the guts of common household items (which wears off pretty quickly), who really needs a see-through cell phone?
My question is, how durable are these suckers? What will happen if you scratch it? If a small scratch == unreadable data, there's a serious problem. You're not just losing data stored in one layer, but the nine others behind it!
Furthermore, are these going to have a "wrong side"? CD ROMs are vulnerable to "media scratches" because they only put a very thin coat over the reflective media on the top side of the cd. I wonder what a media scratch would do to a multi-layered approach like this. How well are the layers bonded to each other? Can chipping occur due to weak bonding?
Oh well. Just seemed like appropriate questions to ask... If the technology is durable enough that you can use it without walking on eggshells (and isn't horrifically expensive), this could turn out really kewl.
Well, that beats the heck out of the time I cut the 3.5" drive bays out of my mid-tower case with a hacksaw so it would accomodate Asus' baseboard/processor daughtercard system. Bystanders outside in the dorm courtyard thought it was funny as hell though... And I still haven't gotten around to actually using the second socket 7!
I feel for the guy. On one job I had I ended up splicing a monitor cable extender from Radio Shack onto an old IBM PS/2 monitor because I didn't have any more parts to cannibalize from monitors that were lying around... The guts of monitors are not fun things to mess around with.
Well, part of this may have come from the decision against Intel that numbers cannot be trademarks (? feel free to correct me, I think they sued Cyrix or something?), which led to the 586 being named the Pentium. Things have just gone downhill from there. Now the combined force of marketing has apparently decided that the average consumer can't handle numbers for product differentiation. Sad part is, they're probably right.
First time I've heard it suggested that the FCC is an industry-based organization... If you want industry self-regulation, think the folks that put the ratings on movies. --Fesh
Re:The humans rights violations are irksome
on
China Enters Space
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· Score: 1
Instead, they put the man who invented modern rocket science to work on rocket assisted take-off systems for aircraft carriers.
I seem to remember something about Goddard being inspired by some Russian dude by the name of Tsilkovsky... Before the flames erupt here, could anyone confirm or correct me (gently) on this?
Not to say that the Army wasn't shortsighted on this though...
Did you even read the FoF? If so, could you tell me which paragraph Judge Jackson says that Microsoft charged too little for Windows? I don't recall seeing it after reading the entire document.
Now he did say that Microsoft charged too little for IE, but since they're different products and since the undercharging was linked to abusive behavior that allowed them to charge more for Windows, I don't see how that is a valid argument.
Another odd fact: there's infinitely more real numbers than integers. I keep trying to convince my coworkers of this, but they refues to listen. --Fesh
Um... Problem is, according to the facts established by Judge Jackson, this ain't hype anymore. I've been reading the FoF, and frankly I'm apalled. And what about the crap they were pulling with J++? They agreed with Sun to adhere to Sun's standards for Java, then turned around and added their own proprietary and decidedly non-standard stuff in utter contempt for that agreement. I'm sure I don't need to bring up the so-called "Halloween Document" to demonstrate that Microsoft has a record of taking well-defined external standards and extending them in nonstandard and proprietary ways in order to gain or keep hold of market share.
Slashdot Mirror
Related question to commo overhead... It usually takes much more effort to make/break a connection than to maintain one, correct?
The only real solution I see is centralized control over servers. Not necessarily closed source, but using an untrusted client model with a server in control of someone who has an interest in seeing that the game is played by the rules. This is pretty much the way I'm leaning with an idea that I'm kicking around at the moment... I as a game designer have a vision of how things should run in "my" universe, so I feel that I would need to keep server-side control. Is this unreasonable?
--Fesh
--Fesh
Buy a laser pointer.
--Fesh
If Christian Brothers' actions are indicative of the attitudes of spammers in general, spamming is going to become criminalized real quick. These folks have no respect for the law or even common decency. For crying out loud, they were telling people they could cure Cancer by eating apricot seeds??? That sort of thing should be prosecuted as fraud! Oh well... Hopefully this will serve as precedent, and the spamming "industry" is about to take it in the pocketbook.
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
Uh, no. We stopped evolving the moment we took control of our environment instead of being subject to it. Natural selection is no longer a force in human evolution. Traits which would get folks killed in a hunter-gatherer environment are no longer a barrier to reaching breeding age.
Arguably, severe allergies would put you in danger from some large predator because you couldn't detect its presence in time (runny nose means you can't smell it, watery eyes mean you can't see it). Thus you wouldn't have survived long enough to pass them on to your son. That's natural selection. But we live in a technological society. How many large predator attacks have there been in New York? And isn't Claritin great for relieving allergy symptoms? We've shaped our environment to our own ends, and thus we no longer evolve.
I'm seeing a lot of concern over "stagnation of the species" in this discussion. Fact is, it's already happening! It's been happening ever since the first human decided to feed his badly maimed friend instead of leaving him to die because he couldn't contribute to the survival of the group. Genetic engineering is just another example of a technology that separates us further from the effects of natural selection.
I'd be interested to see if some of the nastier genetically-based diseases we deal with on a regular basis today were present in the past. For instance, I'm willing to bet that allergies were never as widespread as they are today. If everyone can survive to breeding age, any random mutations, even potentially life-threatening ones, can enter the gene pool and propagate unchecked.
But anyway... I got off on a rant there. We're better off now than we were in the hunter-gatherer period of our past. However, natural selection has never been a factor in human change. If our environment somehow kicks our asses, then evolution will occur. Until then, we're just the same as those Cro-Magnons way back when. The only difference is the amount of artificial change that we are capable of causing.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Philadelphia brand cream cheese is made in sweatshop factories with indentured Quakers as workers. You object to this.
But you love American style individually-wrapped cheese slices, and you can't live without having a bottle of Cheez Whiz within three feet of you. How are you going to force Kraft to change its behavior when you're unwilling to forgo every product they produce?
--Fesh
Anyone know where I can purchase a copy of this? NPR did some really spectacular stuff as far as "audio adventures" back in the '70s and '80s. The Fourth Tower of Inverness and the other Jack Flanders adventures from ZBS spring immediately to mind... It's a shame they don't seem to do that anymore (at least not in my area).
--Fesh
--Fesh
Before you all get the wrong idea about the Christian aspects, the book does not get preachy as you might expect from the review. Instead, it portrays the conflict between reason and religion from a third-party perspective, showing equally the beneficial and harmful aspects of each. It forces you to look at both sides of the issue - not from the perspective of which is wrong and which is right - and shows how very similar the two points of view can be.
Above all, it's a study of human nature. I can't elaborate much more than that without spoiling it, but it highlights our inability as a race to learn from past mistakes. And scattered through the deep philosophical implications are some of the most humorous situations I've encountered since Douglas Adams (I'm not saying it's a laugh riot; the humor is well balanced to provide just the right amount of comic relief.) All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this book if you haven't already read it. And if you have, read it again! (Especially if it's been a while...)
--Fesh
--Fesh
This wasn't meant to be an anti-Apple flame. It just seems funny to me that more and more things are being made in transparent plastic varieties. Phones, pagers, you name it... And other than the initial niftiness of getting to see the guts of common household items (which wears off pretty quickly), who really needs a see-through cell phone?
--Fesh
Is there a theoretical limit point on the density of magnetic media like there is for semiconductors? If so, this has a lot of potential.
--Fesh
Furthermore, are these going to have a "wrong side"? CD ROMs are vulnerable to "media scratches" because they only put a very thin coat over the reflective media on the top side of the cd. I wonder what a media scratch would do to a multi-layered approach like this. How well are the layers bonded to each other? Can chipping occur due to weak bonding?
Oh well. Just seemed like appropriate questions to ask... If the technology is durable enough that you can use it without walking on eggshells (and isn't horrifically expensive), this could turn out really kewl.
--Fesh
Hopefully you deprive yourself of the ability to reproduce.
--Fesh
I feel for the guy. On one job I had I ended up splicing a monitor cable extender from Radio Shack onto an old IBM PS/2 monitor because I didn't have any more parts to cannibalize from monitors that were lying around... The guts of monitors are not fun things to mess around with.
--Fesh
Well, part of this may have come from the decision against Intel that numbers cannot be trademarks (? feel free to correct me, I think they sued Cyrix or something?), which led to the 586 being named the Pentium. Things have just gone downhill from there. Now the combined force of marketing has apparently decided that the average consumer can't handle numbers for product differentiation. Sad part is, they're probably right.
--Fesh
First time I've heard it suggested that the FCC is an industry-based organization... If you want industry self-regulation, think the folks that put the ratings on movies.
--Fesh
Instead, they put the man who invented modern rocket science to work on rocket assisted take-off systems for aircraft carriers.
I seem to remember something about Goddard being inspired by some Russian dude by the name of Tsilkovsky... Before the flames erupt here, could anyone confirm or correct me (gently) on this?
Not to say that the Army wasn't shortsighted on this though...
--Fesh
Did you even read the FoF? If so, could you tell me which paragraph Judge Jackson says that Microsoft charged too little for Windows? I don't recall seeing it after reading the entire document.
Now he did say that Microsoft charged too little for IE, but since they're different products and since the undercharging was linked to abusive behavior that allowed them to charge more for Windows, I don't see how that is a valid argument.
--Fesh
Another odd fact: there's infinitely more real numbers than integers. I keep trying to convince my coworkers of this, but they refues to listen.
--Fesh
Great point. Somebody moderate this up, please...
--Fesh
--Fesh
Um... Problem is, according to the facts established by Judge Jackson, this ain't hype anymore. I've been reading the FoF, and frankly I'm apalled. And what about the crap they were pulling with J++? They agreed with Sun to adhere to Sun's standards for Java, then turned around and added their own proprietary and decidedly non-standard stuff in utter contempt for that agreement. I'm sure I don't need to bring up the so-called "Halloween Document" to demonstrate that Microsoft has a record of taking well-defined external standards and extending them in nonstandard and proprietary ways in order to gain or keep hold of market share.
Ms-TCP. Fear it.
--Fesh
--Fesh